Utility lines, such as lines for telephones, electricity distribution, natural gas, cable television, fiber optics, Internet, traffic lights, street lights, storm drains, water mains, and wastewater pipes, are often located underground. Utility lines are referred to as “buried assets” herein. Consequently, before excavation occurs in an area, especially an urban area, an excavator is typically required to clear excavation activities with the proper authorities and service providers. The clearance procedure usually requires that the excavator contact a central authority (such as “One Call”, “811” and “Call Before You Dig,” which are well known in the art) which, in turn, sends a notification to the appropriate utility companies. Subsequently, each utility company must perform a buried asset detection procedure, which includes having a field technician visit the proposed excavation site, detecting the relevant buried assets and physically marking the position of the buried asset using temporary paint or flags. Usually, a technician visiting a proposed excavation site utilizes a device known as a conventional locator—a commercial, off-the-shelf, utility locator device that detects and identifies buried assets using radio frequency and/or magnetic sensors. Upon completion of this procedure by the appropriate utility companies, excavation can occur with the security that buried assets will not be damaged.
Utility companies are faced with increasing requests to locate and mark the position of their buried assets to avoid damage from third party excavators, contractors and underground horizontal boring operations. These processes require the services of very experienced and skilled technicians that can detect buried assets. This brings up major issues of manpower and the financial resources required to meet said manpower requirements. With experienced technicians in short supply, utility companies do not have the resources to attend to all such situations that are presented. Furthermore, even for experienced and skilled technicians, finding target buried assets can be time-consuming and cost intensive. As such, this leads to increased manpower costs for utility companies and service providers, as well as potential safety hazards to workers and the general public.
Therefore, a need exists for improvements over the prior art, and more particularly for more efficient methods and systems for detecting and locating buried assets.